The BCS National Championship Game drew the largest audience for any sporting event since last year’s Super Bowl.
Alabama’s win over Texas on Thursday drew a 17.2 final rating and 30.8 million viewers on ABC, up 9% in ratings and 15% in viewership from Florida/Oklahoma on FOX last year (15.8, 26.8 mil), and up 19% and 33%, respectively, from LSU/Ohio St. in ’08 (14.4, 23.1 mil).
The 30.8 million viewers is the most for a college football game since the 2006 title game between Texas and USC (35.6 mil), and the second-most ever for the a national championship game in the BCS era.
Additionally, the 30.8 million viewers tops every single regular season NFL game during the 2009-10 season — including Brett Favre‘s return to Lambeau Field (29.8 mil).
Alabama/Texas stands as the most-viewed sporting event since Super Bowl XLIII, and — excluding the NFL and the Olympics — the most-viewed sporting event of any kind since the aforementioned 2006 Texas/USC game.
To put the numbers in perspective, no Major League Baseball game has drawn at least 30 million viewers since ’04 (and no World Series game has hit that mark since ’02), no NBA game has drawn 30 million since ’98, and no college basketball game has drawn 30 million since ’94.
The game gave ABC its highest rated Thursday night since 1995.
Locally, the game drew a 67.4 rating in Birmingham, AL, and a 47.8 in Austin, TX. Elsewhere, the game drew a 37.2 in San Antonio, a 33.4 in Nashville, a 31.3 in Dallas, and a 29.9 in Atlanta.
